I MUST tell you first what happened to me in this present life since it
is in this one that I am relating to you about many other lives of mine.
I was a simple student of our high Philosophy for many lives on earth
in various countries, and then at last developed in myself a desire for
action. So I died once more as so often before and was again reborn in
the family of a Rajah, and in time came to sit on his throne after his
death.
Two years after that sad event one day an old wandering Brahmin came to
me and asked if I was ready to follow my vows of long lives before, and
go to do some work for my old master in a foreign land. Thinking this
meant a journey only I said I was.
"Yes," said he, "but it is not only a journey. It will cause you to be
here and there all days and years. To-day here, to-night there."
"Well," I replied, "I will do even that, for my vows had no conditions
and master orders."
I knew of the order, for the old Brahmin gave me the sign marked on my
forehead. He had taken my hand, and covering it with his waist-cloth,
traced the sign in my palm under the cloth so that it stood out in
lines of light before my eyes.
He went away with no other word, as you know they so often do, leaving
me in my palace. I fell asleep in the heat, with only faithful Gopal
beside me. I dreamed and thought I was at the bedside of a mere child,
a boy, in a foreign land unfamiliar to me only that the people looked
like what I knew of the Europeans. The boy was lying as if dying, and
relatives were all about the bed.
A strange and irresistible feeling drew me nearer to the child, and for
a moment I felt in this dream as if I were about to lose consciousness.
With a start I awoke in my own palace--on the mat where I had fallen
asleep, with no one but Gopal near and no noise but the howling of
jackals near the edge of the compound.
"Gopal," I said, "how long have I slept?'
"Five hours, master, since an Old Brahmin went away, and the night is
nearly gone, master."
I was about to ask him something else when again sleepiness fell upon
my senses, and once more I dreamed of the small dying foreign child.
The scene had changed a little, other people had come in, there was
a doctor there, and the boy looked to me, dreaming so vividly, as if
dead. The people were weeping, and his mother knelt by the bedside. The
doctor laid his head on the child's breast a moment. As for myself I
was drawn again nearer to the body and thought surely the people were
strange not to notice me at all. They acted as if no stranger were
there, and I looked at my clothes and saw they were eastern and bizarre
to them. A magnetic line seemed to pull me to the form of the child.
And now beside me I saw the old Brahmin standing. He smiled.
"This is the child," he said, "and here must you fulfil a part of your
vows. Quick now! There is no time to lose, the child is almost dead.
These people think him already a corpse. You see the doctor has told
them the fatal words, 'he is dead!'"
Yes, they were weeping. But the old Brahmin put his hands on my head,
and submitting to his touch, I felt myself in my dream falling asleep.
A dream in a dream. But I woke in my dream, but not on my mat with
Gopal near me. I was that boy I thought. I looked out through his eyes,
and near me I heard, as if his soul had slipped off to the ether with a
sigh of relief. The doctor turned once more and I opened my eyes--his
eyes--on him.
The physician started and turned pale. To another I heard him whisper
"automatic nerve action." He drew near, and the intelligence in that
eye startled him to paleness. He did not see the old Brahmin making
passes over this body I was in and from which I felt great waves of
heat and life rolling over me--or the boy.
And yet this all now seemed real as if my identity was merged in the boy.
I was that boy and still confused, vague dreams seemed to flit through
my brain of some other plane where I thought I was again, and had a
faithful servant named Gopal; but that must be dream, this the reality.
For did I not see my mother and father, the old doctor and the nurse so
long in our house with the children. Yes; of course this is the reality.
And then I feebly smiled, whereon the doctor said:
"Most marvellous. He has revived. He may live."
He was feeling the slow moving pulse and noting that breathing began
and that vitality seemed once more to return to the child, but he did
not see the old Brahmin in his illusionary body sending air currents of
life over the body of this boy, who dreamed he had been a Rajah with a
faithful servant named Gopal. Then in the dream sleep seemed to fall
upon me. A sensation of falling; falling came to my brain, and with a
start I awoke in my palace on my own mat. Turning to see if my servant
was there I saw him standing as if full of sorrow or fear for me.
"Gopal, how long have I slept again?"
"It is just morning, master, and I feared you had gone to Yamâ's
dominions and left your own Gopal behind."
No, I was not sleeping. This was reality, these my own dominions. So
this day passed as all days had except that the dream of the small boy
in a foreign land came to my mind all day until the night when I felt
more drowsy than usual. Once more I slept and dreamed.
The same place and the same house, only now it was morning there. What
a strange dream I thought I had had; as the doctor came in with my
mother and bent over me, I heard him say softly:
"Yes, he will recover. The night sleep has done good. Take him, when he
can go, to the country, where he may see and walk on the grass."
As he spoke behind him I saw the form of a foreign looking man with a
turban on. He looked like the pictures of Brahmins I saw in the books
before I fell sick. Then I grew very vague and told my mother: "I had
had two dreams for two nights, the same in each. I dreamed I was a king
and had one faithful servant for whom I was sorry as I liked him very
much, and it was only a dream, and both were gone."